A Data Challenge for Retail

Personalization is not just a digital mandate

Author: Monica Melton

June 13, 2017

Retail’s focus on personalizing the shopping experience was a key theme at the recent IRCE conference in Chicago, and continues to be a challenge for retailers already working hard to develop their ecommerce efforts.

Recent data from RetailWire underscores the importance of personalizing the in-store experience, and the need to take a broad view of customer interactions when thinking about working with shoppers in the store.

According to the survey of worldwide retail executives, roughly seven in 10 use POS data/purchase history for in-store personalization.

A similar share of respondents cite loyalty card or payment data as the source of customer information.

But less than half of respondents say the stores they work with use any of the other sources to capture customer information. For example, utilizing browser history/cookies was a strategy employed by 42% of respondents. Even less popular among retail execs was picking up on social chatter from social media (social listening) at 37%, while less than one fifth (17%) used customer service tickets.

Even fewer retail execs, less than 1 in 10, used device fingerprinting (8%) or facial recognition (6%).

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As previously reported in eMarketer Retail, retailers are investing to figure out how to speak to consumers on a personal basis, with the goal of offering products and services that are truly one-to-one recommendations.

According to an April 2017 report from BlueVenn, nearly 4 in 10 (39%) marketers plan on using real time personalization in the next 5 years.

For some retailers, personalization spells revenue. According to a Boston Consulting Group survey, brands that used technology and data to offer customers personalized experiences saw revenue increase by 6% to 10%.

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